


We All Die Alone

by KrokoRobin



Category: Collateral (2004)
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Child Abuse, Gen, Murder, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 23:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2043696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KrokoRobin/pseuds/KrokoRobin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If everyone around you is pretending, you start pretending, too. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re all hollow inside. Does it?</p><p>A quick rundown of Vincent’s life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We All Die Alone

He is five years old and he can’t sleep at night.

He tries to imagine himself as one of the unjustly convicted inmates from the old westerns they keep showing on TV, or that he reads about in his books. He reads a lot.

He’s in the sheriff’s jail, for a crime he didn’t commit. He got framed by somebody, or was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But no matter what his punishment will be, they won’t get him to confess. Just like the heroes in the movies, he won’t make a sound, he will show no weakness, he will not let his guard down.

He knows the sheriff is going to be back any time now.

The fear keeps him fidgeting with his blanket, his eyes wide open. The fear of the sound of the apartment door lock.

~

He is seven years old and he got hold of the saxophone. There has never been a time in his life when the instrument hasn’t represented everything that’s wonderful to him. On hot days he could sit for hours on the door sill, his head leaned against the frame, listening to the melody wafting over him along with the cool evening breeze into the gray backyard with all its weeds and little, mousy flowers.

The music never seemed to fit in here, more appropriate for saloons full of people, but somehow it never got there.

However, now it’s his turn to coax these sounds out of the instrument. He feels excitement ripple through his chest, shoulders, arms and fingers. He lifts the instrument to his lips, the mouth piece still tasting like old cigarettes, and tries blowing into it. A pathetic, suffocated squealing noise is all he gets.

The sound of steps outside of his room make him jolt. He’d thought he was alone! The door flies open, he feels his whole body tense. Wide eyed, he stares at his father, towering above him despite his relatively small build. As the man takes his first step towards the boy, he feels like he’s shrinking and shrinking, and he wishes he could shrink until he becomes invisible.

His eyes pressed shut, he’s waiting. But nothing happens.

"What kind of bullshit is this supposed to be?", his father growls. The boy opens his eyes again. The man is now sitting right beside him, looking down disapprovingly on the saxophone. He reaches out to adjust his sons fingers on the keys.

Vincent freezes, but in a whole different kind of way than before. Haven’t these hands always been terrifying…? Now his father’s fingers on his feel dry, warm.

"More like this", his father murmurs and makes a gesture prompting him to try again. He does. The noise still sounds wobbly, but there is something around his father’s mouth and eyes. He’s smiling.

Vincent feels like crying, and he doesn’t know why.

~

He’s nine years old and he’s been asked a question. A jazz question. He doesn’t know the answer. His father turns away, shaking his head. “Didn’t think so.”

Bitterness and disappointment aren’t things that can be ignored so easily, especially not if the person you’re disappointed with is yourself.

~

He is twelve years old and he just got sent back from the foster home.

"Why do you even want me back?", he yells, his hands clenched to futile fists.

"Because you are MY son!", his father bellows, reaching for the boy’s collar. "Because we are in this TOGETHER!"

But they’re not in this together. It’s not like he’s had a choice. He’s in this alone.

He’s felt hopeless before, but he never felt so powerless in all his life. Whatever he does, he will always boomerang right back here, with this man, with the wounds and the shouting and the fear.

It’s this night that Vincent looks for and finds his father’s gun. Every day thereafter he hates himself for not using it. He’d thought it would be easy to get rid of the gyve, to escape his prison. Has he felt weak before, he now feels pathetic. But every time his hands reach for the weapon, his fingers are trembling so badly that he can’t even hold the muzzle to his own temple without almost dropping it.

Actually, it is more of an accident when it finally happens. He lays on the ground retching, his fathers knee in his throat, and the last thing he can remember before passing out is the cold metal in his palms, his mind automatically performing what it has been thinking about for the last few weeks, and the incredulous look in his father’s eyes.

~

He is seventeen years old and he can finally get out of here, out of the juvenile hall. He’s heard of the army, that there’s salary, educational benefits, and all that stuff. He doesn’t want to stay there forever, but he wants a decent graduation.

Maybe he’ll be able to pick up music again once he’s earned some money.

~

He is twenty-three years old and his girlfriend of about a year lies beside him in bed.

"If I told you this relationship was over, would you care?"

He’s on leave for a few days and she invited him to crash at her place. They don’t see each other very often, or for extended amounts of time.

He stares at the ceiling and thinks about her words for a bit. They’ve just been talking about how she’d be home late tomorrow and that he’d have to do the grocery shopping. He feels disoriented.

"No", he answers.

A few seconds of silence. “No…?”, and her voice sounds strained.

He doesn’t get it. It’s like there is a blank wall in front of him. He can’t climb it. He can’t go around it. He can’t break through it. He doesn’t want it to go away. He’s afraid what lies beyond it.

"Don’t you ever miss me?", she’s whispering now.

"I don’t think so", he says. "I don’t miss anything when I’m on duty actually." It’s where everything makes sense, where nobody asks these kind of questions. There everything is crystal clear. The only thing that he sometimes feels is lacking in his life is… "The club."

"What…?"

"I miss the club. Sometimes I lie awake at night and wish I was there, listen to the music… or whatever…"

"You mean that Jazz bar you’re always hanging out at?" An exasperated groan. "Forget it, I should’ve known better." The rest of her grumbling is unintelligible, but he can hear the words "emotionally stunted".

He sits up. He wants to object. He knows he’s not. There’s nothing wrong with him. It’s everyone else who’s being needlessly complicated. He can now look right at her face. She looks back, with that defiant expression of hers. “Then why are you together with me, huh?”, he almost shouts.

The defiance vanishes. She looks back at the ceiling and takes a deep breath. “I don’t know, Vincent. You have your moments. You can be very charming. Not bad-looking either.”

He can’t even look at her anymore. His stomach feels weird. She’s saying these nice things, and he doesn’t know why. It takes a moment until he realizes that he can’t remember when somebody last paid him a compliment. Did anyone ever? His sergeant often compliments him on his reaction rate and because he’s usually the first one to correctly assemble his rifle. But not like this. His sergeant yells at him, his face all wrinkles and teeth. Her voice was soft and-

"I think it’s because I fell in love with you", she murmurs.

His first reaction is nothing but a stare.

She ignores him. “Or at least I used to be, once, I think. And you, you have to have some reason to be here!” Her words aren’t soft anymore.

It takes him about a minute to think of something. He hesitates to say it though. “The sex is good. Now and then.” He almost expects her to get upset again, but she just keeps lying still and then says “Yeah. Now and then.”

They lie there for a moment, and he wishes he could think of something to say, but he can’t even think. He doesn’t even like sex all that much. She always touches him when he least expects it, and digs her fingers into his hair, makes his scalp tingle and his stomach churn. But at least it works.

She sounds weirdly matter-of-factly as she says “Have you ever thought of getting therapy?”

He snorts. Yes, he’s heard of people who need therapy. The sick and the deranged. She probably just wants to catch him off-guard. That won’t happen. A grin spreads on his face. Finally he gets what this is all about.

"Maybe you’re the one who should get therapy, if you’re so hell bent on being together with a guy you don’t even like."

"I never said I-", but she interrupts herself, for whatever reason.

He pins her arms down with his knees as she tries to fight back and kisses her until she bites down so hard on his lower lip that he jerks back.

She’s very silent as she orders him to get out. He’s confused.

A few days later, he calls her once, she doesn’t pick up. They never see each other again.

He’s used to being alone. Everyone’s alone. Right?

~

He is twenty-seven years old as he gets the call. Special forces, that’s quite something, he muses.

Sometimes he walks by a shop that sells second hand instruments.

~

He’s thirty-five years old and he’s crouched behind a burnt out car, the noise of machine guns ringing in his ear and his heart racing. A square paved with dead bodies, among them some of his team members, separates him from the enemy.

But he’s not powerless.

He’s got his gun in a firm grip, fitting perfectly into his hands.

There’s nothing else he needs.

~

He’s forty years old when he receives his third contract. Everything is where it’s supposed to be. He’s managed to get his residence far, far away from all this havoc. He reads a lot. Even bought himself a saxophone. Not a secondhand one. A shiny, new one.

It’s beautiful with its arcs and the keys covered with nacre.

He’s never used it so far.

After all, he still can’t properly play it, and the instrument is too wonderful to be forced through amateurish attempts at playing it. He’s got some books on how to teach oneself how to play. He’s read them numerous times. There’s always something else coming up, and the saxophone lies, untouched and pristine, in its case.

~

He’s fourty-five years old when he sits in a train.

It’s been about seven hours since the corpse of his first hit this night dropped, along with his pretenses.

There is this question like a loose cog in his clockwork, it’s grating and scratching and squeaking and hurting. He’s tried to ignore it, he’s tried to replace it, he’s tried to pretend. But with every round, it goes again and again and again.

What is it, what is it, what is it that you’re missing?

He feels betrayed, and he feels like crying and he doesn’t know why.

The darkness is drawing closer, and a dangerous warmth that he’s all too familiar with.

All at once, he can feel it again, the walls all around him, now riddled with cracks and fissures, crumbling and collapsing, slowly smothering him beneath the fragments.

Through the gaps he can see somebody on the other side, a person, and with a mix of indignation and… is it affection…? Vincent notices it wouldn’t surprise him if it was this guy’s fault that all this is coming down on him now.

In Vincent’s quickly dimming eyes there is but one question: “Will you do me one last favor?”

And he knows, as always, that he’s left Max with no choice.


End file.
